In the packaging industry, high speed packaging machines commonly package thousands of items such as beverage bottles in a single production run and at high speeds. It is sometimes desirable to place advertising or other indicia on the bottles in a removable manner before they are packaged. One way to do this is to place a tag containing the indicia onto the neck of each bottle where the tags are held in place with elastic anchor bands that are secured to one end of the tags. Such tags exist in the form of long ribbons or webs wherein multitudes of tags and their elastic anchor bands are defined in the web by score lines or partial cuts so that each tag and its band can be detached from the web. A need exists for a apparatus and method for removing these tags from the web and placing their elastic anchor bands over the tops of bottles (or other objects) at high rates, in continuous succession, and in a reliable and efficient manner. There also exists a need for such an apparatus to be easily reloaded or re-threaded with a new web of tags when one web supply is exhausted to minimize the down time required to reload the apparatus. It is to the provision of such an apparatus and to the corresponding method that the present disclosure is primarily directed.